Boobies. Lol

It’s safe to say that, by now, we’ve had more than our fill of night buses in South America. Thankfully, the one from Puno to Arequipa was the last one we’d have to endure as our journey to Huacachina, nearly 400km to the north, featured the ever so slightly less tedious prospect of a 12-hour day bus. Far from being done to save my heavily strained circadian rhythms though, this seems simply to be a result of timetabling constraints imposed by the need to get buses back up to Lima as quickly as possible.

But anyway, whilst the nuances of trans-continental transport logistics may be of interest to me, I doubt anyone else cares. Least of all Katy, who stood in the courtyard of Flying Dog hostel at 5:45am stewing over the need to be up for a 5:15am pickup which, of course, did not happen at 5:15am. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that Peru runs on GMT (Greenwich Maybe Time), but we still haven’t managed to work out how exactly anything is able to function when there is such a lackadaisical approach to time-keeping. Perhaps this was just more irksome this time because every minute that passed was another minute that we had unnecessarily dragged ourselves out of bed.

Shortly before 6am, our guide turned up at the hostel and escorted us to our bus for journey ahead, a single-deck, semi-cama coach. Fine for a day-time trip, but as we got on, the bus was still offloading very cranky, sleep deprived Hopsters (‘Hopsters’ being the collective noun for Peru Hop customers that the company insists on using at every opportunity, Marketing’s invisible hand is slowly working its magic in Peru) who had just arrived after a 10 hour overnight ride from Cusco. Poor sods.

The bus made its way through the streets of Arequipa, picking up and dropping off passengers as it went, including our Kiwi friends from the Colca Canyon tour. Our guide for this leg of our journey was a young, curly haired and fresh-faced Peruvian called Joao, who was surprisingly enthusiastic for someone who had was slap-bang in the middle of a 22-hour shift. After a quick pit-stop at a garage just outside of the city, Jaoa handed out a packed breakfast to each of us and sent a menu round for our lunch for later in the day. Breakfast consumed, we bedded ourselves in for the first leg of our journey to the small coastal town of Chala.

On top of not screwing up your sleep patterns for several days, the day busses have the advantage of giving you something to look at. After leaving Arequipa the bus descended quickly through the Peruvian Desert, a patchwork of red and brown chasm and vegetationless golden dunes stretching uninterrupted as far as the eye can see. 3 hours after our departure we dropped down through a deep, rocky ravine following a dried up river bed which led us down to on to a large roundabout overlooking the Pacific where we joined Route 1, the Peruvian stretch of the Pan-American Highway. Despite its lofty title, the road is a poorly maintained single carriageway which meanders along the clifftops overlooking the sea, providing an exciting rallying opportunity for our driver who had a keen interest in the back-ends of the numerous trucks on the road

We headed north for a further 4 hours, arriving at Chala at about 2pm where we were treated to a surprisingly pleasant lunch of fresh Ceviche and Fried Trout in a sea-front restaurant. After a short break we boarded the bus again and headed inland through the Nazca desert, one of the driest in the world and home of the renowned Nazca Lines. The southern end of the desert is a baron, sandy plain which stretches from the coast to the foothills of the Andes about 30 miles inland.

After heading through Nazca City, we worked our way through the rocky northern section of the Nazca desert which is covered in a layer of deep-red oxide coated rock and sand atop of a greyish subsoil. It’s this area of the desert which hosts the Nazca lines, a network of enormous glyphs, figures and anamorphic shapes up to 370m long. The lines were created by the Nazca civilisation roughly 1500 years ago, each consisting of trench about half a foot deep dug through the top-soil. Even today it is not fully clear why or how the lines were created, and theories range from the more rational – they were religious symbols drawn to appease the gods – to the stupid – they were landing pads for alien spacecraft. Today, with the exception of a depiction of a lizard which had a Highway ploughed through it, and a depiction of a hummingbird permanently scarred by idiots from Greenpeace, the lines are remarkably similar to how they were when first constructed; preserved naturally by the arid conditions and surprisingly consistent temperature and humidity in this costal desert.

The Nazca lines are dotted around the desert over an area of about 20 square miles, and the only way to see them properly is from the air by taking a bi-plane out of Nazca or Ica. The tour operators who offer these flights are poorly regulated though, and fatal crashes involving tourists are all too frequent, so we opted instead to stick with the free trip Peru Hop do to one of the viewing towers overlooking the site. It was pretty late in the day when we got to the viewing tower and there was quite a large queue of tourists waiting their turn to climb to the top. As the sun set it was our turn to climb, making it to the top to look over the lines with just enough time to spare before the light faded too much. From our vantage point we could see the tree, the hand/frog/thing and the Lizard, cut in two by the road. Along with the zoomorphic shapes we could see numerous other lines and large geometric shapes stretching off in to the distance. It was really cool to see these lines up close and to get a sense of their scale, but to be perfectly honest they are best off appreciated in a photo gallery where you can see them in their entirety. Its impressive that the ancient Nazca people pulled off drawing these huge shapes without being able to see them from above though.

The sun set across the desert as we set off again for the final few hours of our drive to Huacachina, the small Oasis just outside the city of Ica. We arrived about 8:30 in the evening and were dropped off in a large, sparsely developed plot of land about halfway between Ica and Huacachina where we checked ourselves in to the Huacachina Desert Hotel. A little confusingly the hotel didn’t have a sign outside, so we ended up ringing on the door of the only building in roughly the right location. Luckily this turned out to be the right place and we found ourselves in an exceptionally pleasant, clean and well laid out little hotel with a pool, a kitchen which was free for guests to use, a bar and dining area and a 2-story block of 10 rooms at the back. After a long day of being on a bus we were fully ready for bed so stuck on the industrial size fan the room was equipped with and went to sleep.

The following day we woke to gorgeous sunshine, blazing heat and huge sand dunes towering over the walls around our hotel. Ica and Huacachina are on the edge of a vast sandy desert filled with towering dunes, it’s the picture postcard image of the typical desert you might imagine as a child. But having not been able to see the dunes when we arrived the previous night seeing their imposing presence so close caught us by surprise. We’d earmarked the day to be a relaxing one where we didn’t get up to much so after a quick trip to a supermarket we spent the rest of the day lounging by the pool reading and taking the occasional dip. It’s a hard life all this travelling.

Monday rolled in and we spent another morning and early afternoon being rather unproductive, before setting off to Huacachina for the Dune Buggy and Sand Boarding tour we had booked on to with Peru Hop. We walked the 20 minutes or so to Huacachina through the sandy verges of the road until we dropped down the short hill in to the Oases. Huacachina is a small lagoon surrounded on 3 sides by restaurants and hotels with the 4^th side being a sandy beach stretching straight onto a dune. The permanent residency is only about 100 people with the whole town geared up solely for tourism. We’d heard before arriving that Huacachina was a bit of a dive and a tourist trap but were pleasantly surprised to find that, whilst certainly not the world’s most amazing place, the lagoon and its surroundings are really quite pleasant. A wide, bench-laden stone promenade lined with trees and rustic Parisian-style streetlamps encircles most of the lagoon, the town is clean and the restaurants and shops overlooking the promenade are pretty much what you’d expect to find in any tourist district in South America.

We got to the meeting point about 3pm along with around 150 other ‘hopsters’ and were slowly and chaotically organised (there’s no translation for this word in Peruvian Spanish) in to groups before being led up on to the dunes and assigned to a buggy. The sand buggies are large, open sided vehicles with broad, deeply grooved wheels, huge suspension springs and a reassuringly beefy roll cage all around the passenger compartment. The seats are arranged in 3 rows of 3 in a stadium like layout with the front seats nice and low down towards the centre of gravity. Katy and I ended up in the front seat with the driver and the gear stick stuck in to Katy’s leg.

Our seatbelts as tight as we could make them, the driver jumped in, turned over the engine which coughed up a plume of sand from its previous adventure and we were on our way, steadily heading out of the make-shift car park and up to a small control point where our driver handed over our entry tickets to a customs officer of some description. Only the Peruvians – a people with an incredible imagination for arbitrary taxes – would bother to have a ticket control point to entre a desert. It was like the scene in Blazing Saddles where there is a single toll gate in the middle of the Utah desert and nothing to prevent you going around it. Once through the control point the driver stamped on the throttle and the buggy bolted up the massive dune in front of us and Katy, as if physically linked to the throttle pedal, dug her hands in to my leg and buried her head in my shoulder.

The buggy tore over the sand at break-neck speed, bouncing over bumps and hurtling down the valleys between the dunes. I loved it. Katy hated it. The driver, a big jolly fellow who had enough confidence in his own driving to not wear his seatbelt seemed to get off on the screams of the gringos, finding particular amusement in the moment Katy grabbed his leg as we went down the side of an especially steep dune. After 20 minutes or so of bombing around we congregated with a group of other buggies atop a trio of ridges to do some sand boarding. The driver handed out the boards from an open storage cage at the back of the buggy (somehow, they hadn’t been flung free) and we took it in turns sliding head first down the dunes. Piloting the board took a little bit of skill and there were more than a few who took a tumble on the way down, but the forgivingly soft dunes ensured that nobody suffered anything worse than a grazed knee and a mouth full of sand.

After taking on the 3 smaller dunes the driver took us to the top of the tallest dune for miles around and we had the more daunting prospect of a much longer and steeper run. Katy and one of our fellow buggy buddies (I know! I should have thought of that sooner as well!) egged each other on to go down. Another smaller dune and then a final really steep dune later we were done, but not before I managed to fall off on the last slope, diving shoulder first in to the dune and completely smothering myself in sand. The sun was setting as we made our way back to Huacachina where Katy had decided that after our ordeal, we needed a sizeable amount of booze to soothe our frayed nerves (for the record, I didn’t, but I wasn’t going to argue). We headed to a restaurant down on the shore of the lagoon and made full use of the happy hour specials. Several beers and cocktails later, we got back to our hotel and decided that the best way to get all the sand out of our hair, ears, toes and all the other places sand can get to when you’ve spent the day sliding through it on your stomachs, was to go for a late night swim.

Our final day in Huacachina was an early start as we’d booked ourselves on to a tour of El Catador vineyards just to the north of Ica. The region of Ica is renowned for its Pisco production, regarded by many as the best in the country. At El Catador they still make the Pisco using the traditional production methods developed during the colonial era. The grapes used for Pisco are descendants of the grapes originally brought across by the Spanish in the 16^th century when they began setting up vineyards for wine production. The hot, dry conditions in Ica cause the grapes to grow small and sweet, the high sugar level making them produce very sweet wine (way too sweet for the export market but popular here) and also makes them perfect for distilling in to the much, much more potent Pisco, typically between 40% and 45% proof. After a brief tour around the production facilities we were led down in to a basement bar for an opportunity to sample the products of the vineyard. We sampled the Rose and a couple of Whites produced on site, all of which were too sweet for our taste, as well as 3 varieties of Pisco including a creamy liquor made with maca root that tasted surprisingly like Baileys. Sampling complete we merrily staggered back on to the bus and headed back to our hotel to spend the rest of the afternoon again lounging by the pool, letting the effects of the Pisco steadily wear off.

For a renowned tourist trap, Huacachina had proven rather pleasant and we enjoyed our time there a lot more than we had expected to. We were sad to leave our lovely little Hotel the following afternoon to make the next leg of our journey with Peru Hop to Paracas, a small coastal resort on the other side of the desert built around the bay formed by the large, mushroom shaped Paracas Peninsula. We arrived in the early evening and headed to our hotel in what had been described by one of the reviews as being ‘in the ghetto’ (presumably by someone who had never been to a developing country before, by local standards it was a perfectly normal street). Hungry, we headed out to one of the restaurants recommended by our Peru Hop guide, a 5^th floor rooftop fish restaurant which received our business only because we were hungry and didn’t know until we were up there how expensive it was. That’s how they get you.

An underwhelming meal later we headed back to our hotel where we both had a terrible night’s sleep owing to the noisy fan and plastic mattress protector which we had to unpeel ourselves from every few hours. Ho Hum. At least we were only staying there for 1 night owing to it being the Easter weekend and every hotel in Paracas being full.

We woke up involuntarily early the next day and trudged down for breakfast, groggy and irritable. We did at least have something to look forward to though, a boat trip out to Islas Ballestas Nature reserve, a small chain of islands about 10km off shore that hosts thousands of sea birds including pelicans, cormorants and humboldt penguins as well as being a breeding ground for sea lions. We spent about an hour on the boat working our way around the island and watching the mass of wildlife, the highlight being the infant Sea Lions only a few weeks old frolicking in the water on the gravelly beaches. The mass of wildlife on the rocks was incredible and as we made our way back to shore a vast swarm of blue footed boobies (lol, boobies) was making its way back to the island from a fishing expedition, all flying in formation close enough that they appeared almost like a black blanket floating across the sky.

Back on land we went for a spot of lunch at a small bar that served the tastiest smoothies ever in giant glasses shaped like fish bowls. Our adventures for the day continued with a bus ride around Paracas National Reserve, a national park covering the Paracas Peninsular as well as a small stretch of desert further inland. The bus stopped at several vantage points overlooking the sea and the rest of the reserve as it worked its way back up the coast. Not a great deal to see, but the sparseness of the landscape has its own charm and the jagged rocks along the sea front had the familiar feel of the Dorset coast, albeit without the vegetation.

Our short tour finished and we headed back to Paracas to board our final Peru Hop bus, a 5-hour ride to Lima, stopping en-route at Tambo Colorado, a set of Inca Ruins named for the red colour the buildings were painted, some of which can still be seen today. The site is a large and fairly impressive complex used, rather mundanely, as an administrative outpost overseeing the coastal trade routes.

The sun set as we left Tambo Colorado, setting too on the final stretch of our South American adventure. Next time it rose, we’d be back in Lima with just over a week to go before flying home.

An Englishman, a Kiwi and a Bolivian go out in to the desert.

Apologies for the delay in this blogs publishing, we’ve been staying in a series of places with very unreliable internet connections.

If there’s one thing that we’ve learned during our time in South America, it’s to never take the UK’s small geography for granted. This is a lesson that was going to be hammered home very hard over the coming week.

Our bus to Uyuni from Sucre, winding westwards through the Andes to the vast Plain which hosts to the Bolivian Salt Flats took just over 8 hours. After the steep slopes on which most of the towns we’ve visited in South America sit, the pancake-flat Uyuni was something of a welcome change. That’s pretty much Uyuni’s only redeeming feature though, it’s a small, dirty and dusty block-layout town known, even amongst the locals, as something of a ****hole. The town used to be a hub for exporting the regions rich mineral deposits but now serves primarily as a jumping off point for tourists visiting the salt flats. The strong winds that blow off the salt flats through the city strew rubbish everywhere and cover every surface in a thin layer of grey-brown, salty dust.

After spending half an hour waiting for the receptionist to show up we finally checked in to our hotel for the night, a somewhat underwhelming twin room (we’d asked for a double, but this is South America; sometimes you just have to settled for a rough approximation of what you asked for (further note on this; this can go either way. At time of writing we’re sitting in a suite room where we’d only booked a double. Six of one…)) which looked like it was last renovated in the late 80’s. It was the best we could get for a reasonable price and for just 1 night it served its purpose. Due to Uyuni’s remote location and the high salt content in the soil, there is no agriculture or fresh-water supply and consequently the cost of living is very high; a cost reflected in the price of hotels, restaurants and other amenities.

The following morning, we headed over to the offices of Quechua4WD, our tour operator for our 3-day salt flats tour. Here we met our guide Nando, our Driver Daniel and Saatchi, a Kiwi of Sri Lankan heritage who now lives in Canada and spent much of the first day of our trip seeking my approval for the numerous (he claims) sexual conquests he’d made during his time in South America, and largely ignoring Katy.

We departed Uyuni about 10am, stopping first at the ‘train cemetery’ 3 miles to the south of the town. Back in the late 19^th and early 20^th Century, Uyuni was a major rail depot en-route to the Pacific, but with the collapse of the Bolivian mining industry in the early 1940’s the line fell in to disuse. The majority of the engines and rolling stock were dumped in sidings on the outskirts of Uyuni where they quickly fell in to disrepair, and were scavenged for any easily removed valuable parts. Today, the nearly 100 trains slowly rusting in to the desert landscape with the salt-filled winds whistling through them are covered in gravity and an unrelenting swarm of tourists. There’s a plan to turn this place in to a museum; the sooner the better.

After half an hour of wandering around the train cemetery, we jumped back in our 4×4 and set off towards the small village of Colchani, one of several towns on the shore of the Salt Lake where the locals are permitted to mine and refine the salt. As well as packing salt for wholesale and retail, the locals use densely-packed blocks of salt from deep within the salt flats to construct buildings and make ornaments and statuettes to sell to passing tourists. After a quick tour around one of the many family-run salt refineries we headed out on to the salt flats.

The Bolivian salt flats (Known as the Uyuni Salar) are the largest in the world, covering an area of over 4,000 square miles, or about half the size of Wales. The elevation change across the entire Salar is less than 1 meter, meaning that satellites use the large, flat reflective surface for calibrating their altitude sensors. During the rainy season the Salar is covered in a thin layer of water, turning it in to the world’s largest natural mirror, whilst in the dry season, the water evaporates leaving just the crystallised salt deposits. In the centre, the Salar is about 50cm more elevated than at the edges, meaning that as the wet season ends, the centre is dry but the edges are still submerged in a few centimetres of water. This makes March the optimal month to visit the Salar as you get to see the Salar in both states. Lucky Us!

We drove out about 3 miles on to the Salar, stopping at a small outpost made of salt bricks, inside of which is an expensive hotel and restaurant. The outpost also serves as a staging post for the Bolivian Leg of the Dakar Rally, which has been coming through the Salar since 2014. Whilst we had a mooch about attempting to identify all the flags on small outcrop by the outpost, Daniel prepared lunch for us. Refreshed, we set off again deeper in to the heart of the Salar. Once we found a spot without any other tour groups too nearby, we stopped to take advantage of the Salar’s unique landscape for ‘perspective’ pictures. Nando showed off his creativity with the perspective shots, having us climb wine bottles, ride llamas, walk along our own shoelaces like tight-ropes and hold miniature versions of each other.

After an hour we continued further until we found the edge of the area still covered by water. According to Nando, at this time of year the water recedes at a rate of several hundred meters a day. The plan was to stay out on the Salar until sunset taking photos with the reflection, but sadly the high winds negated the mirror effect. To kill the time, we popped on some wellies and set off in the direction of some Flamingos we could see in the distance, deciding after half an hour that that was probably a pretty dumb idea and making our way back. As the Sun began to set the wind dropped off and we were treated to an utterly awe-inspiring scene with the mountains in the background, the red and pink clouds and the setting sun reflected off the now perfectly tranquil water.

In the twilight we headed back to Uyuni, stopping off at a small local restaurant for a meal where Saatchi informed us of his genius plan to control the human population by banning vaccines. That night our accommodation was a charmingly decrepit hostel with a surprisingly comfortable bed. It would have been a perfectly good night’s sleep were it not for the loud Americans banging on the door to the hostel at 2:30am. Owing to political disagreements between Bolivia and the US, Americans have to pay about $160 to get a Bolivian Visa. Evidently this is not enough.

Groggy, sleep deprived and cursing the USA we staggered down for breakfast with an irritatingly refreshed Saatchi who hadn’t been bothered by the commotion in the night. Nando turned up soon after to pick us up and we jumped back in to the 4×4, this timed joined by a Japanese couple who were travelling with us to the Chilean border. I’d tell you what their names were, but I can’t remember. They spoke little English and no Spanish (Goodness knows how they’d made it so far through South America) and spent much of the day asleep in the back of the 4×4.

Our adventure for the day took us south from Uyuni on a long trek through the epic Bolivian Altiplano towards Eduardo Avaroa National Park which occupies the southwestern corner of the country by the Chilean and Argentinean borders. The journey took us first along paved roads for a couple of hundred kilometres before heading off-road in to the desert. For hours upon hours we meandered through valleys and ravines, past lakes and mountains, stopping every few hours or so to take stock of the breath-taking landscape. With each valley we went through the geology and wildlife changed dramatically. One moment we’d be in sandy desert, the next surrounded by Quinoa fields or massive, chaotic rock formations shaped by volcanic activity and sandstorms. We passed several lagoons filled with Flamingos, including the aptly named ‘red lagoon’, given a deep crimson colour by the high concentration of Algae fed by the hot springs pouring in to the lagoon from the surrounding mountains. This is a really beautiful part of the world, and its remoteness means it is largely untouched.

Towards the end of the day we climbed to nearly 5000m (but not quite over 5000m, which is good because our travel insurance isn’t valid above 5K), the weather closed in and it started to snow. We made our way through the mist and snow to the Sol De Manana fumerals; boiling pools of grey volcanic mud that give off a constant stream of thick, sulphurous gas. The snow, mist and high winds combined with the fumerals created an utterly other-worldly locale, truly like nothing else on earth.

Our final stop for the night was a small, remote village on the shore of large lagoon where we would be staying the night. Our accommodation was a simple shared dorm with the mattresses propped up on breeze-block bases. Comfortable enough, but at 4400m, the prolonged effects of high altitude made for a difficult night’s sleep. Before bed though, there was time to head down to the hot spring by the edge of the lagoon. Our remote location, complete lack of light pollution and high altitude meant that the sky was more densely packed with stars that any night sky we’d ever seen. The ark of the Milky way stretched over the lagoon in front of us all the way to the horizon and for over an hour Katy and I just lay there in the hot spring, gazing up at the stars, more relaxed than we could remember being in a long time.

The final day of our tour started with a trip south to the Chilean border to drop off our Japanese friends. The car park for the Bolivian immigration office is on the Chilean side of the border meaning that, technically, we entered Chile. Yay! The border between Chile and Bolivia marks the frontier between South America’s richest and poorest nations, despite this the border is marked only by a small ditch that is easily stepped over. Nando couldn’t help but make sly observations regarding border walls. Our business concluded we set off back north, following a similar pattern as the day before, stopping off at natural beauty spots as we worked our way back up to Uyuni. The final stop we made was at Laguna Negra on the edge of an ancient lava field. The lagoon is surrounded by tall, jagged orange rocks jutting out at all angles from lush green grasslands, grazed upon by flocks of Llamas. Nando said this was his favourite stop on the whole trek, and it was very easy to see why.

After a long day in a 4×4 we arrived back at Uyuni and, having been without internet for 3 days, desperately caught up on the Grand Prix results. As if we hadn’t spent enough time in vehicles already, we now had a 10-hour night bus to La Paz ahead of us. Goody. As is tradition, I didn’t sleep a wink, meaning that by the time we got to our hostel in La Paz I’d been up for about 26 hours. We didn’t do much with our time in La Paz, I mainly slept, and Katy wrote the previous Blog post. We ate at the hotel restaurant and got an early night’s sleep as we had to be up at 5:30 the following morning to catch our bus back to Copacabana.

Up early but well rested, we departed La Paz for the final time, arriving in Copacabana about 11am. We checked in to La Cupula again, where we’d pushed the boat out a bit and treated ourselves to one of their suites complete with Jacuzzi, Chimenea and view over the beach. Despite the luxury, it was still a good deal cheaper than a night at a Premier Inn. The next day we took the boat out to Isla Del Sol, the only real Activity in Copacabana which we were unable to partake in on our previous pass through the town due to illness. Isla Del Sol is the birthplace of the sun in Inca folklore, and today is home to about 3000 people across 3 communities. Disputes between the communities over income from tourism spilled out into violence a few months ago, resulting in most of the island now being inaccessible to tourists and ruining it for everybody.

The boat ride out was about an hour and a half in to the wind and over choppy waters. Once at the Island we went for a short walk up past some ruins, north-west across the island before heading back down to another port in the village of Yumani. With most of the island closed off there wasn’t a great deal to see, but it was a pleasant enough walk.

We got back to Copacabana about 5pm just in time to catch our bus across the Peruvian border to Puno, arriving at about 8pm. It was sad to wave farewell to Bolivia, a country we’d both enjoyed greatly, and more so than we thought we would. Whilst on the bus we booked ourselves on to a tour of the floating Islands near Puno for the following day, which meant another early start for a 6:45 pick up. The minibus picked us up at the surprisingly prompt 6:50 to head down to the port where we boarded a riverboat with about 40 other sleep deprived tourists. To wake us up we were serenaded by the delightful combination of out of tune guitar and off-beat panpipes covering a medley of western pop songs. The offending musician then rounded the boat for tips (What’s Spanish for ‘guitar tuner’?) before being replaced by Alex, our guide for the day.

The floating islands are home to the Uros people, an offshoot of the Aymara who live on a network of floating islands made of reeds which have to be constantly replenished to prevent them rotting away. In total, there are about 5000 people living in communities across Lake Titicaca on both the Bolivian and Peruvian sides, but by far the largest of their communities is the one near Puno, located in the centre of a large series of reed-beds and frequented daily by fleets of tourist boats.

In this community there are around 90 islands straddling a wide natural channel through the reed beds. Our first stop was at a small island in the channel approaching the village, here the village leader assigned us to a particular island to visit. This way the tourists are distributed evenly around the islands, allowing each island (typically home to 2-5 families) to share equally in the revenue from tourism, as well as controlling the footfall on each island which can accelerate the rate at which they wear down. We were assigned to ‘Condor Island’ about two thirds of the way up the western row of side of the channel. The islands inhabitants helped bring our boat in and we jumped down on to their home. The Islands are about 3 meters thick and 2/3rds submerged, they have the feel of a firm mattress, giving way slightly under foot and gently swaying with the movements of the lake. Our group was gathered around in a semi-circle and one of the Islands inhabitants who gave us a short demonstration of how the islands are built and how the locals go about their lives, complete with dolls and toy boats.

Our little show-and-tell complete we were invited to look inside the homes of the locals, take pictures from the islands watch-tower and, of course, to buy tourist toot. As we departed, we were given the option of riding on one of the large catamarans fashioned of reeds that they locals refer to as ‘Mercedes Benz’s’. Large and unwieldy, they exist purely for the amusement of the tourists. We couldn’t resist though and climbed aboard on to the upper deck for a ride across to the large capital island on the side of the channel, but not before the local’s sang us some farewell songs, including a rendition of ‘row row row your boat’.

On the capital island we had the opportunity to get our passport stamped with a ‘Lake Titicaca Islands’ stamp (bad idea) and buy more tourist toot. The floating islands are genuinely interesting and seeing the unusual way of life of these people is fascinating, but as with so many rural communities in the developing world the population is dwindling fast as the young depart for better opportunities in the cities. What’s left of the population is now totally dependent on tourism and the Islands have a gimmicky, almost theme park like vibe to them. It’s lamentable that the islands have lost their authenticity but were it not for the transition to capitalising on tourism, this is a way of life that may well have disappeared entirely by now… Half a dozen of the other.

After the floating Islands we set off for the island of Taquile, about an hour and a half’s boat ride away just outside of Puno bay. The experience here was much like the Isla Del sol the day before, without the disputes dividing the island. After an hour of walking along the north of the island we arrived at a rustic, rather charming little town square, much of which was unchanged from the colonial era. After regrouping we headed down to a small restaurant in the garden of a local family home for a very tasty meal of Quinoa soup and trout fresh from the lake (The trout is an invasive species here, so it’s guilt-free meat!). There was, of course, the usual demonstration of local textile production and traditional dances to accompany our meals and Alex gave us an explanation of the unique dress customs of the Islands communities with a suspicious focus on identifying who was unmarried. Like the floating islands, Taquile’s population is also in decline. Perhaps they hope to get more than just money from the tourists…

We headed down to the harbour and boarded the boat back to Puno, this time opting to sit up on deck with a Dutch woman called Ava and an Ausi called Paul who we’d struck up friendships with over lunch. We got back to Puno about 4pm and headed back to our Hostel to ready ourselves for yet another night bus, this time to Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. But that’s a story for next time.